


Sleepwalkers: Side B

by TheMayBellTree



Series: Sleepwalkers Universe [2]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Another Episode, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, Character Death, F/M, Friends to Enemies, M/M, Psychological Horror, Slow Burn, Survival Horror, Violence, Zombies, i'll add a fair amount of fluff don't worry :), lots of horror
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-07 14:24:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14672955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMayBellTree/pseuds/TheMayBellTree
Summary: On the day of the outbreak, Kaede Akamatsu was listening to music, waiting to go home and practice for her upcoming recital. She really didn't expect the zombie apocalypse to happen that day. Now she's stuck in a post-apocalyptic world with a band of misfits, and not all of them are keen on her style of leadership.On the day of the outbreak, Kaito Momota wanted nothing more than to finish his trigonometry homework and be done with it. So when his long-time friend started getting attacked by a zombie, he really couldn't believe it. Not that that stopped him from bashing it's head in. Now he has blood on his hands, and he wishes nothing more than for things to go back to the way they once were.-Zombie Apocalypse AUSister Fic to Sleepwalkers: Side A by DillasWrites





	1. Phase 1: 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 6 Days

**Author's Note:**

> Heeeeey~! Look, we're collabing! Let's have fun with this, shall we?

On the day of the outbreak, Kaede Akamatsu was listening to music.

 

Her finger tapped the table in time with the melodic, evil melody of the organ and she found herself humming under her breath, whispering a sullen tune. She itched to be done with the school day, to be away from it all, to be sat in front of a grand piano melding her fingers with the white and black keys in front of her. She’d give anything not to be stuck in a useless free period, surrounded by chattering students and instead on a stage, precariously placed lights shining a dazzling spotlight on her being.

 

She envisioned it. She saw herself in front of an audience, hammering her fingers in tune with the violinists hailed to back up the melodic symphony that she provided. The audience would give her a standing ovation, clapping and applauding and throwing bouquets of flowers at her feet as she bowed and blew kisses like she was the Queen of England.

 

Her music was turned up far too loud, to the point where her phone had actually warned her about the volume. She'd dismissed it, put her earbuds in, and lost herself in the music. She didn't doubt that her classmates on either side of her, Kaito and Himiko, could hear the faint melody pouring from her ears.

 

Someone tapped her shoulder.

 

With a huff, she took the earbud nearest him out of her ear and gave Kaito the side eye. The sudden abuzz chatter of the cafeteria contrasted sharply with the crescendo of Bach. “Huh? What's up?”

 

He gestured to the trigonometry homework laid in front of him. “I'm stuck on number three.”

 

“Kaito, I'm horrible at math! You know that! You've got like a ninety-six!”

 

“You're not bad at it unless you say you are!”

 

“I mean…” she bit her lip and fiddled with her free earbud. As much as she saw where Kaito was coming from, she really didn't want to have this conversation right now. All she wanted was to listen to music until the school day ended, then scamper home and prepare for her upcoming recital. “Bach is playing right now.”

 

Kaito lifted an eyebrow, “oh, it's that again?”

 

She nodded. He stared at her fingers, ghosting the imaginary keys in time with the tune of the organ.

 

Kaito picked up his pencil, twirled it around in his hand, and hummed. “Well, I'm probably just looking at this from the wrong angle. Thanks for the help, Kaede!” If Kaede were anyone else, she wouldn't doubt that Kaito was being sarcastic. But Kaede was Kaede, and Kaito was Kaito, so she knew better.

 

She smiled in appreciation, plugged her earbud in, and closed her eyes as she was surrounded in a world of harmony. She listened to the softening melody, the pickup to the penultimate point, then the drop back to softness all in the dramatic way of an organ. It embodied her world view, brought her back to consciousness, made her so, so _human_ that nothing could drag her away from it.

 

In that moment, while she cluelessly closed her eyes and listened, the innocence of the world shattered. She didn’t register the sudden drop in temperature. She didn’t hear a twin set of piercing screams as two students had their stomachs ripped open and slashed into with ragged, dirty fingernails that were far too blunt to do any significant damage other than a thin, beaded line. She definitely didn’t notice when those two students turned into the same kind of monster that had attacked them just a moment earlier.

 

What she _did_ notice was the heavy metallic scent of gore and bones. At that moment, Kaede looked to her side and saw Himiko with a set of teeth latched into her neck, just to the side of where her jugular would’ve been, orchestrated to the tune of Tocatta and Fugue in D minor.

 

“T-Tenko!” she cried, screamed, and fell down, an entire chunk of flesh and tissue missing and stuffed in Tenko’s mouth. At that moment, as the world shifted and the musician continued playing that damn organ, Kaede watched in marvelled horror as Himiko’s body hit the ground with a hard thunk. Tenko was just _standing_ there, gray skin sagging _,_ unmoving and so utterly and horribly calm even with her late girlfriend’s blood dripping down her chin. _What the hell!_

 

Kaede gave a yelp and fell backwards out of her stool, legs flying and hands rapidly fumbling for support before she hit the ground. No dice. With a thud and a groan, Kaede’s head ricocheted against the marble flooring and a hot stickiness trailed down the back of her neck. _Great,_ just _what she needed!_ Her phone hit her stomach as it trailed after her and the music kept flowing into her ears.

 

In that moment, Tenko had snapped her attention to her. Considering the blood-hungry monster that she had become in the past minute, Kaede had expected that turn of events to come to fruition eventually. She fully anticipated a quick and painful death at the hands of Tenko ripping into her chest and stomach and wherever her teeth could reach.

 

She really, _truly_ didn’t expect Himiko to leer up at her from her spot on the ground, crouched on all fours and fangs bared and growling and slick with saliva. She still had a chunk missing from her neck and blood still soaked her uniform from the wound, but all she could think of was devouring Kaede, piece for meaty piece.

 

Kaede ran.

 

Well, that was the plan.

 

She had hit her head harder than she thought. Right as she forced herself up onto shaky legs, her vision faded into a bleak darkness and she fell face first over a fallen stool ( _Kaito’s stool_ ), bashing her nose hard against the floor with a sickening crack.

 

_Crap crap crap crap cra_

 

She was going to die.

 

She heard the rabid, low snarl of Himiko _that definitely shouldn’t belong to her_ from behind her. Kaede gripped onto the floor below her in desperation, all slick with her own blood ( _at least she_ hoped _it was her own_ ) and began pulling herself along, towards wherever was safe, no matter how unlikely a platitude that was.

 

Kaito was dead too, wasn’t he?

 

The thought made her pull herself further and further away. A small hand latched around her ankle, she felt Himiko pull her ankle up to her mouth, and-

 

_Smack!_

 

She looked behind her, wide-eyed and hysterical and bloody, and saw Kaito standing far above her. For a second she froze, fully expecting him to be another one of the zombies. Then she registered the item in his hand, a bloodied stool with Himiko’s brains smack on the end of it. Tenko ran towards him, and with a swing of his fist he knocked her right upside the head, threw the stool after her, and darted right over to Kaede and picked her up.

 

She stared at the deadened - and this time she just _knew_ she was dead, actually dead - form of Himiko, features mushed and unrecognizable and so disturbing that she couldn’t believe that _Kaito_ had caused that.

 

“She was a zombie,” he muttered, blanched and sweaty and shivering, and Kaede had the feeling that he said that more for his own benefit.

 

From over his shoulder, she could see blood splattered along the walls and the reanimated corpses of her fellow students - her _friends_ \- lurking around and racing towards every non-infected person at the slightest trace of movement. Kirumi, the most giving person she had ever spoken to, pounced onto a scared freshmen as he tried to dart away, tugging his hair and biting straight into the fine flesh that hung from his cheekbone.

 

She averted her eyes. No way this was real. No way no way no way no no no

 

“Kaito, watch out!” a male zombie lurched towards the duo, and Kaede barely noticed him before he was on them, teeth bared and spit linking their two rows of teeth together. Kaito whirled out of the way with the smallest of grunts, nearly dropping Kaede in the process. He kicked the zombie across the head, effectively winding him but definitely not hard enough to make him fully go down. The delay was just long enough for Kaito to turn around towards the back entrance of their school, race towards it, and kick open the doors with such a force that the hinges nearly flew off. Kaede thanked her lucky stars that she had managed to end up with the star of the lacrosse team as her personal bodyguard, not to mention her _friend._

 

For some odd, fantastical reason, Kaede had been hoping that the situation inside the cafeteria might’ve just been a fluke, an abnormality, a phenomena that had appeared out of happenstance and would disappear as quickly as it had come.

 

That was not the case.

 

Under the false pretense of a bright blue sky and a warm sun, flowers blooming and birds screaming and blood flying, the entire campus, hell, the entire _world_ ran in terror as zombies charged after them, tearing flesh and the pitiful cries of children lining the street.

 

Kaede just about threw up right then and there but forced herself to swallow the nausea, knowing that the last thing Kaito wanted right then was to have a bloody girl’s puke all over his favorite galaxy-print jacket… besides getting eaten.

 

“Holy fuck…” Kaito gaped, stared, and then darted towards the back fence of the school. His shoes made a wet, sick sound as they pounded onto the grass, still wet from the rain they had had during the early hours of the morning.

 

They got closer, closer, _closer_ to the edge of the fence, Kaito set her down onto the ground in a desperate attempt to untie the chain knot over the gate entrance, and then-

 

A zombie came.

 

Kaede didn’t recognize him. She only recognized his uniform, his face, his hair and _everything_ about him vaguely from one of her home economics classes, but she didn’t recognize _him._ He had a lump of flesh torn open around his wrist, bleeding and festering, and he stared at her with such a disquieting blankness that she nearly ran away at that moment, throwing Kaito to the wolves - or the zombies, she thought bitterly - but chose to remain sitting still on the ground, quiet and unmoving.

 

The zombie didn’t move. He stood still, head perched forwards as if waiting.

 

Kaito shook the gate and the zombie lurched.

 

“K-Kaito!” her head hurt, the world was foggy, and her words could barely come out. She had never felt so useless. She was always the optimistic one, the leader, the one who was able to take charge in the face of difficulty. Now literally everything had gone from worse to worst, and Kaede could do nothing but watch as her long-time friend was about to be mauled and turned into one of those _things_ right in front of her eyes.

 

The world slowed down. She watched, bit her lip in between her teeth, and waited as Kaito turned slow, _too slow_ , to see what she was yelling at. He opened his mouth, a question obvious, and then promptly shut up and flung his hands out, holding the zombie back by the shoulders as he wrestled for his life.

 

Kaede couldn’t do anything. She couldn’t walk, she couldn’t speak, and she definitely couldn’t help fend the zombie off. She sat like a waiting duck, blood cascading down from her broken nose and skull, watching helplessly as her friend was about to be devoured by a flesh hungry killer.

 

Kaito fell to the ground. The student straddled him and opened his mouth to bite at the revealed area of his neck. Kaito pushed him away, and pushed, and pushed…

 

Screw this, screw her concussion, she had to do _something!_

 

Kaede surveyed the area. Just useless pieces of sticks and stones. There was a torn area in the fence that they had failed to noticed, but it’s not like that could do any good right now.

 

… wait.

 

She experimentally picked up a rock from the ground just next to her. She turned it over in her hand, bounced it up and down, and then promptly proceeded to throw it straight at the chainlink fence, a few feet down from where Kaito wrestled with the zombie. He paused, his head tilted just so towards the direction of the sound.

 

_Ah ha!_

 

At this point, Kaito had also stopped struggling and stared at the zombie in trepidation, head tilted just so and mouth gaping like he had just found the fabled secret boss in a video game but was unsure how to approach. Good, just according to plan.

 

Kaede reached out to grab another rock. It was a bit farther away this time so it took a bit more effort, but she tossed her body onto the ground and crawled towards the rock, hoisted it in the air like a well-earned trophy, and then chucked it straight at the fence again. Her aim was weak and her throw was even weaker, but it bounced off of the fence with a loud clunk so Kaede figured it couldn’t of been too bad.

 

The zombie lunged towards the fence, bidding Kaito goodbye from where he laid frozen on the ground. It was strange, but Kaede wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

 

She softly called Kaito’s name and gestured at the open spot in the fence. It was small and had jagged chain ends and would’ve definitely caused tetanus if Kaede hadn’t already gotten her shot, but she’d rather face some rusty chains than zombification.

 

She army-crawled towards the fence and started squeezing through it, forcing herself to flatten herself as much as humanly possible, which proved to be difficult considering her… assets. The ends of the fence snagged onto her sweater and she definitely felt the ends of it poke into her skin. Right as she poked her head through to the other side and continued crawling, she suddenly found herself in a stump. She tried to drag herself further but failed, and she cursed every known god in existence for giving her _this_ bad of luck. She was stuck.

 

She bid a glance over her shoulder. Through the chainlink, Kaito was giving her a dubious look which he attempted to masquerade as a look of concern instead. Key word: attempted. The zombie was still milling around near the far end of the fence, so Kaede allowed herself the privilege of embarrassment.

 

“Um, Kaito…” she called, still whispering. “Can you help?”

 

Kaito nodded mutely. Oh good, he had caught on.

 

He went over to the fence and surveyed it up and down. He then took off his jacket, bundled it into a tight ball, and threw it over the fence to where it landed directly next to Kaede’s head. He then proceeded to grab hold of the fence firmly, pick himself up onto it, and begin to climb it with such a grace and such a _rattle_ that Kaede’s blood ran cold.

 

Crap.

 

Kaito dropped to his knees in front of her and grabbed firmly onto the crooks of her elbow. From over her shoulder, she could see that the previous zombie’s - and a few others’ - attention was peaked. Their heads tilted towards the direction of Kaede and they began to idly roam towards the duo.

 

As she was looking, Kaito must’ve decided to start pulling her to safety because she suddenly felt the most piercing, sudden pain on her back that her mouth unwillingly dropped open into a wordless cry. The zombies picked up their pace.

 

Kaito gave another firm tug, and this time he didn’t let up. He dropped his butt directly on to the ground and placed his feet on either side of her body, grasping onto her arms as he cast a glance behind her. The wires of the fence trailed across the already festering wounds on her back and dug firmly into them still, catching skin and pulling it straight off of her body. She wanted to scream and cry, and a few tears definitely made their way to her eyes, but she bit firmly onto her lip in an attempt to muffle her sounds of anguish. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth.

 

Kaito pulled her all the way through.

 

He stood up and held his hand out to her. When he looked at her, she could practically hear him saying: “can you stand? Can you walk? Can you run?” so she simply nodded, despite not having a definite answer to the question herself. She grabbed hold of his hand and forced herself upright onto the ground on shaky legs, her back dully throbbing and her head hurting and her nose most definitely broken. She had to immediately grasp on to the fence to keep herself upright, a sudden dizzy spell taking over her and blackening her vision once more. She really was a mess right now.

 

Not like that would stop her.

 

“Your house is closest,” she murmured, “we should go there.” She would give nothing more than to go home, see her parents for what might be the last time, and plop down onto her piano bench and begin practicing for a recital that was never going to happen, but Kaede wasn’t stupid. Not fully. She knew that they needed to survive. She knew that she had to keep Kaito alive. She knew that survival might not be pretty, but it was necessary and she hated every moment of it.

 

Kaito nodded and took off, jacket picked up and strewn securely over his shoulders as though it were a cape instead. Kaede followed him, much slower and shaky and she pretended not to notice when Kaito slowed his pace so that she could keep up.

 

If Kaede thought the school was bad, the city was a _lot_ worse. Tens of cars sat steaming on the main road, either crashed into each other or random light poles sat just next to the main road. People with jobs, families, kids or wives or whomever, milled the streets as flesh-eating monsters, completely oblivious to their presence. If Kaede were to just go off scenery alone, minus the zombies and broken down cars, it looked like a perfectly normal day in their town. The buildings were stable and cleanly and some had new paint jobs, and the street lamps that weren’t mowed over were off and ready to illuminate the street at night.

 

Kaede really wished that they didn’t have to use _this_ street of all places to get to Kaito’s.

 

She tugged on the sleeve of his now-muddy jacket to get him to stop running. “Hey,” she whispered, gesturing to the horde. “We should move quietly from here, don’t you think?”

 

It took a moment for him to get her gist, but he nodded all the same. The pair of them crowded together, Kaede gripping tightly onto Kaito’s forearm in an attempt to calm her nerves. She wanted to talk, to fill the silence of something other than groans and to take her mind off of the scent of rotting flesh, but she forced herself to pay attention to just getting across the street. They were a few streets down from Kaito’s house, all they had to do was get past the main road and then they could use as many backstreets as they damn well pleased. Then when they finally got there, she could take a moment to have a well-drawn out panic attack and steep as far into denial as she needed to. For a short minute, at least.

 

For right now, she stared straight ahead, shuffling past zombies and cringing back at every click the small heel of her shoe made.

 

* * *

 

On the day of the outbreak, Kaito Momota wanted nothing more than to finish his trigonometry homework and be done with it.

 

Needless to say, that didn’t happen.

 

He still felt the splash of blood from Himiko’s brain on his collarbone. He had killed her. The zombie her. The real her. _Her._

 

Kaito now rested in an alleyway, head propped up against the wall as he struggled to catch his breath. Kaede had completely slumped to the ground, the back of her shirt drenched in blood and the flow from her nose having barely slowed down. She pulled her knees up to her chest. “We should take a moment to rest. Then we can keep going.”

 

Kaito nodded. He wasn’t normally one to take orders blindly, but Kaede was the class president for a reason and he was hardly one to refute her judgement in these circumstances.

 

“Hey…” she spoke up again, her voice barely a whisper in the shade of the alley, “we left him behind. Do you think he’s alright?”

 

Kaito knew exactly who she was talking about. To be honest, the thought had crossed his mind; the thought of his best friend zombified and ready to eat other humans. He was scared. Despite that, he put on the brightest smile and gave Kaede a thumbs up, even though his entire world felt like it was burnt to the ground. “No doubt about it! My sidekick isn’t one to go down that easily.”

 

Kaede had the smallest of smiles cross her face. “Yeah, you’re right! No time for thoughts like that, huh?” She stood up, dusted off her skirt, and held her hand out to Kaito. He had the feeling that he’d only serve to drag her down if she even attempted to pull him up, so he waved her off and stood up on his own. “This is probably long enough. We should get moving to your house again.” She bounced from leg to leg, shakily, and started dashing down the alleyway. “There’s no zombies here, so we should be able to run too!”

 

He followed her lead. She was still slow, so it didn’t take much for him to catch up to her, and he likely would’ve if Kaede hadn’t passed the single dumpster in the alley, just outside the backend of a hotel, looked besides it, and promptly shrieked.

 

And then promptly gotten kicked in the stomach.

 

Kaede went down with a groan, clutching onto her abdomen with a pained sigh and a whimper. A new zombie, grey and milky-eyed with a visible bite wound in the crest of his neck, stood on all fours above her, leg sat back down on the ground as he growled and hissed at the fallen girl. Kaito picked up his speed and all but tackled the zombie before it could attack her, picking up his head as they both went down and bashing it against the gravel surface. Then again. Then again. The zombie’s pupils dilated and his body seized as his skull kept crashing with the ground. He started snapping and writhing and kicking at Kaito’s thighs and punching his sides with those big fists of his in a desperate attempt to get Kaito off of him. It hurt, it fucking _hurt_ , Kaito felt as though if he went on any longer that his ribs and thigh bones would contract and expand outwards and poke right through his skin. He tried to stay on the zombie, desperate to save his friend even when he felt himself start getting thrown off and he felt the beginnings of his bones breaking.

 

With a final act of determination and pure iron will, Kaito grabbed his head again, brought it far up to his chest, and then bashed it fast and hard against the ground. The zombie stilled, wide-eyed and mouth agape and _so human_ that Kaito nearly vomited right then and there.

 

He swallowed his guilt, rolled off the zombie, and limped up to Kaede, sore and angry and fostering deep bruises that would appear just a few moments later. The girl was leant against the wall, hot tears rolling down her cheeks and mingling with the blood from her nose. “Y-Yeah…” she groaned, a ghost of a smile on her face, “m-maybe running isn’t the b-best idea.”

 

* * *

 

As Kaito ran up to his grandparent’s house, the only thought on his mind was ‘ _finally!_ ’. He swallowed his nerves over the fact that his grandparents might not even _be there_ \- well, not all there - and charged forth, gait open and Kaede stumbling after him. He tried the door, found it was locked, and pounded it just a touch too loud.

 

“Kaito!”

 

He ignored Kaede. His knocking picked up. “Grandpa? Grandma? You guys there?” His heart pounded, his hands shook, his mind searched and prayed and _hoped for the love of god_ that his family was still alive.

 

He surveyed the area. The windows were locked tight and the fence was closed and fastened. On the window, he saw a sticky note stuck to the glass panes addressed to him.

 

_Hey, Grandpa wasn’t feeling too well so we took him to the hospital! No worries, just a little cold! We’ll be back by tonight!_

 

He swallowed his unease, fists clenching and unclenching as they knotted into the fine fabric of his pants legs.

 

“Hey Kaito, the hospital should be safe. Zombies turn too quickly for anyone to get there in time and register themselves. They’re actually probably safer there than here.”

 

She was right. He knew she was right. Still, the knot in his throat wouldn’t go away. Despite that, he turned and gave Kaede the biggest smile he could manage in his current state, “don’t worry about me! I’m fine, we still need to get you all fixed up!”

 

“... right.”

 

The entire time while caught up in his own emotions, he hadn’t really decided to opt on the side of silence. He hadn’t noticed until it was too late, but a zombie trailed up behind Kaede, short and kidlike and with the longest fingernails. Kaito opened his mouth, said just a touch too loud “Kaede,” and the kid _screamed._

 

Kaede whirled around right when the kid dashed past her and straight towards Kaito. He stumbled past the girl and down the steps and the street. He would’ve run away right then and there if he didn’t see zombies crawling towards the two of them, all angry and fuming and _running._ It was an entire horde! There had to be at least ten, maybe more.

 

They were going to die.

 

Kaede ran up to the house next to Kaito’s, screaming and pounding on the door as the horde began making their way towards her too. That was Maki’s house. If she was alive, then…

 

Yeah, like hell he’ll give up now!

 

The girl was still racing towards him, fangs bared and claws extended. He dodged past her as she slashed at him, kicking her down onto the concrete when her back was turned. It hardly did any damage, but it delayed her.

 

He ran up to the house, two stories tall and with an open window where he knew Maki’s room was. He stood below it, ten feet from Kaede as a dozen zombies ran towards him. “Maki!” he yelled, “shoot!” and with that, he turned and dodged past two zombies as they made their way towards him. He saw Kaede leap over the porch fence as three attempted to grab her, still stumbling but much more coordinated than she had been an hour ago.

 

He’d wasted too much time.

 

He didn’t notice that one zombie was on him already, latched onto his ankle as he tripped him. Another grabbed firmly onto his hair, opening his mouth and bringing his neck towards him. The kid ran fast and hard, fingernails stretched out and ready to scratch his cheek and

 

the kid was dead. A bullet flew straight through her skull and just barely missed Kaito. A sick gollop of blood and gore and brains sprayed onto his cheeks and into his hair and over his clothes. With another shot, the zombie holding his hair was down, dead and bloody just like the girl. A second later, the one on his ankle was gone.

 

_Maki’s alive._

 

When he looked over at Kaede, ready to be ripped apart by two other zombies, he tempted a look at Maki through the window. She stared down the barrel of an assault rifle, pointed at the zombies attacking Kaede but not willing to shoot them. “Maki!” she looked at him. “Please!”

 

And then the two zombies were dead.

 

Like that, the rest of the zombies in the area were shot down like flies. Kaito ran towards Maki’s house door, found it already unlocked, and forced himself inside, Kaede following shortly after. By that point, Maki was already charging down the stairs, machine gun pointed firmly at Kaede and ready to shoot her down at a moment’s notice.

 

“She’s all bloody.”

 

“She’s not bit. I’ve been with her the whole time, she’s not.” As he said this, he trailed closer to her, hands outstretched and up and legs set forward, ready to shield Kaede as needed.

 

“Doubtful.”

 

“ _Maki!_ ”

 

She turned to stare at him, gun still firmly pointed at Kaede but her finger was now off the trigger, like she had just learned gun safety. “What?”

Kaede spoke up, “if I was bit, I would’ve already turned by now-”

 

“Quiet.” Maki stared at her, lowered her gun just the slightest bit, and then turned to Kaito once more. “What does she mean?”

 

Of course, it had occurred to Kaito that Maki hadn’t really _seen_ the outbreak, more than likely she had just watched it from her bedroom window. She didn’t go to school and her parents were overseas, plus quite honestly she was a bit of a hermit, so he really didn’t see her going outside to begin with. So when she said that, he quietly crept towards her and placed a hand over the gun, lowering it to face the ground instead of Kaede. Maki obeyed. “We don’t know what it is. But everyone we’ve seen has turned immediately. So we’re assuming…” he trailed off. Maki stared at him for a moment longer, flung the rifle over her shoulder and let it hang off, attached by a black strap, and marched past the two of them to lock the door.

 

Kaede trailed over to him, hands still up like she expected to be shot at any given moment. “She seems friendly.”

“She’s just cautious. Maki roll’s a nice person.”

 

“Don’t call me that.” With a jump, Kaito spun around to see Maki just behind him. “How long are you planning on staying?”

 

“Uh, well…” he scratched the back of his head, “... until it all blows over?”

 

“... you’re an idiot.”

 

“Hey! They have to be working on a cure somewhere, so we just gotta… sit back and wait.”

 

Maki paused, regarded him with a look that he couldn’t even begin to decipher, and then strode past the two of them and further into the house. “Fine, you can stay for a couple days. Just because I know that you’ll die if I don’t and I don’t want that on my conscious.” She sat down on the couch, an assortment of varying guns and knives next to her, stockpiled. The walls had no decorations, no pictures, no family memorabilia, nothing. Kaito had no idea how she could stand to live in a house like this all day.

 

It must be lonely.

 

With a grin, nod, and a thumbs up, Kaito sat next to Maki and waited.

 

* * *

 

On the night of the outbreak, Kaede Akamatsu was still listening to music. In a creaky house with creaky floors on a creaky bed, she resumed Tocatta and Fugue in D minor.


	2. Phase 1: 4 months, 3 weeks, 5 days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moonlight Sonata: 3rd Movement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey~! Sorry this chapter took so long! These were new characters for me to write from the POVs of so I was really trying to get spot on with characterization... hopefully I didn't do so bad. But hey, it's a long chapter! Whoop!
> 
> Here's Kaede's playlist:  
> https://open.spotify.com/user/dillaswrites/playlist/0xm5BPVIMeEX3Qi7O8ftsx?si=vUVAyl5GQR2LgIxf_6WehA

About three hours into the first full day of the zombie apocalypse, Kaede was woken up from her slumber by a loud crash, a curse, and then silence. She sat up rigidly in bed, back to the headboard as her head throbbed from the sudden movement. From the tips of the fingers to the base of her pounding, concussed skull, she felt the irregular rhythm of an upset heartbeat, so out of line from her regular state that even if she herself wasn’t fully aware of it she just _knew_ something was wrong.

 

In the back of her mind, she had the overwhelming fear that zombies had somehow broken through Maki’s barricades and managed to find themselves in the house. Then she proceeded to disregard that ridiculous notion considering the fact that zombies couldn’t even _speak_ , she doubted that they’d be able to shout “shit!” with such human-likeness.

 

So she waited a moment. Then two. Then three.

 

She tugged her bottom lip between her teeth. Nothing. No one had made a sound.

 

_Maybe it’s Kaito… I should go check…_

 

No, that didn’t sound right either. The voice had been too feminine, too high-pitched and squeaky and downright childish to be Kaito’s. The other option was Maki, but Kaede had the feeling that she wouldn’t be the type to expose her emotions so callously. Then again, if she was surprised…

 

Something about that didn’t sit right with her.

 

Kaede swung her feet onto the wooden floorboards, cringing as the weight of her bare toes made a creak in the structure. She waited. Nothing.

 

As she stood up, her stomach churned with nausea and she almost passed out right then and there but she forced herself to persevere, grabbing onto the headboard in case her brain decided to take a nosedive. She had just broken her nose, she didn’t want to break her neck next.

 

She knew that she must’ve looked absolutely ridiculous, splattered in blood that they had barely bothered to clean up before she had passed out for the night. Her head and nose were both wrapped in so much gauze that she must’ve looked like a partially mummified figure that one would find in a museum. Whoever had entered the house would have to be the sneakiest son of a bitch alive to not look exactly like her, covered in makeshift bandages in a poorly conducted attempt to stop their bleeding. It was three in the morning for god’s sake. Kaede and Kaito had only been outside for one hour and both of them had injuries to show for it, imagine _seventeen_ hours.

 

Whoever it was, they were dangerous.

 

Kaede reached out blindly for the nearest object to steady her. Her eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the dark just yet and she would have to be an idiot to decide to turn on the light now of all times. Her palm hit a metal pole just as she raised her palm from the headboard, indented with straight, small lines along the sides of it. When she raised her hand up, she felt the cold, glass outline of a lightbulb.

 

_Oh. A lamp. That’ll do._

 

And that’s how Kaede begrudgingly found herself headed down a rickety old set of stairs, a floor lamp rested in her hand like it was her IV, planted slightly in front of her as though it were to be used as a shield should the need arise. She listened for whispers along the walls, her ear pressed to it as though her pianist instincts could pick out every differentiation in sound.

 

Logically, Kaede knew she should’ve just stayed in bed. She was already far too brittle and weakened to offer any serious threat, and if she were in a horror movie - disregarding the fact that they practically _were_ in a horror movie - she would without a doubt be the first one to be off’d.

 

Despite that, Kaede knew that Kaito’s room was on the first floor and he’d have to sleep like the dead to not hear the crash. Maki’s room was also on the second floor, but truth be told Kaede was much too nervous to actually go wake Maki up. With how fast her knee-jerk reactions were, Kaede would be a splatter on the wall before Maki had fully accessed the situation and realized that she was _not,_ in fact, a zombie. Granted she was basing that off of one encounter, but having an assault rifle aimed at you does that to a person.

 

“Hm… ooooh, candy~!”

 

The intruder’s voice drifted through the house, like they had no fear concerning the fact that they were in a _literal zombie apocalypse_ with zombies that responded to _sound._ Kaede clamped a hand over her mouth to conceal her gasp and leant forward ever so slightly around the corner of the staircase, squatting down so as to get a closer view.

 

She couldn’t see anything. The intruder hadn’t turned the lights of the kitchen on, so all Kaede could see was a single beam of light being shone on the top most cabinet from the intruder’s flashlight. In the beam a small hand grazed the insides of the cupboard, as though rooting around for something.

 

“Hm, sour patch kids… no, not now. Twizzlers… I prefer Red Vines. Oh, a twinkie!”

 

… it was a kid. Kaede’s pulse slowed and her muscles relaxed. She’ll be fine. She wasn’t going to die.

 

So without a second thought, Kaede used her lamp to stand herself up, trudged over to the kitchen, and flicked on the light.

 

Light flooded the kitchen and Kaede found herself staring at a pink-haired kid on a stool, balanced precariously as she fiddled around on the insides of Maki’s cabinets. As soon as the lights had turned on, the girl swivelled on the ball of her foot, tripped over her own ankle, and promptly fell off the stool and right onto the floor.

 

“Ouch…” the girl kneeled on the ground, head to the kitchen floor as her hands held onto her skull as though it was causing her immense pain. “That hurt…”

 

For a split second Kaede debated falling to her knees and fussing over the child - she _really_ didn’t want to be responsible for giving a kid an injury, especially in the apocalypse - and then she banished the thought as quickly as it had come. The kid had fallen onto her butt, there was no reason for her to be cradling her head. She was just overreacting.

 

So Kaede, as blunt as ever, inquired: “um… what are you doing?”

 

The girl lifted her head as though she had just realized Kaede was there. Another fib, Kaede distinctly remembered the kid making direct eye contact with her as she fell - no matter how briefly it might’ve been. And then, a split second later, the most pleasant smile graced her face; lips curved as to form a small ‘c’ and her shoulders completely relaxed, like there wasn’t a bunch of zombies ravaging the world outside and like there wasn’t a strange, mummified stranger questioning her. “Oh, I was just stealing your food.”

 

_… at least she’s honest._

 

At that moment, Kaito came sprinting into the room, hammer outstretched and ready to bash some skulls in. “Kaede!” he panted as he raised his hammer far above his head, the brunt facing towards the sky as he prepared to defend her. He stopped short, hammer still over his head, and stared at the child, then Kaede, and then the kid again. He lowered his weapon. “Kaede. Why is there a kid here?”

 

“I dunno, I just found her. She doesn’t look dangerous.”

 

The twin-tailed girl merely stared at them as they discussed her, fists up to her mouth like she was desperately trying to hide a grin. She said, without a hint of fear, “oh! I’m too adorbs to be dangerous.” She spun around for emphasis, arms wide open as though she were about to do a curtsy. Her skirt flowed around her. “No weapons either!”

 

So the question remained: how in the actual hell had a _kid_ managed to survive seventeen hours outside amongst thousands of zombies? Kaede gave her a long once over. Her bare arms were hardly marred other than a single scrap on her left elbow and her right stocking had only a slight tear in the thigh, but that seemed to be more out of a loose string being fiddled with than anything else.

 

Maybe she had just gotten lucky. For all she knew, this girl had barely escaped the horde and had taken to Maki’s house for refuge. She must’ve expected all of them to be dead, or if nothing else zombified. Though she had been awfully loud… but she was _just a kid_. Of course she’d do stupid things.

 

So Kaede grinned back at her, leant on her makeshift crutch, and walked over to the girl. She might’ve been trying to steal their food and drain their limited resources, but she was still a fellow survivor. There was no way she was just going to leave a kid to the wilds. She knelt down besides her. “What’s your name?”

 

She didn’t bat an eye. “Kotoko.”

 

“Kotoko. Are your… um… parents okay?” _Alive,_ she wanted to say. _Are they zombies like everyone else? Are you an orphan now?_ It was insensitive and callous and Kaede hated every moment of the stretching silence, as Kotoko gazed up at her with those doe-like pink eyes so innocently, that for a moment Kaede considered clarifying what she meant.

 

So when she spouted a peppy, “nope!” Kaede’s concussion nearly got the best of her. She flattened her palm against the ceramic tile and clutched her other hand more firmly around the lamp.

 

“Um… what?”

 

“They’re dead! I saw them get eaten myself! Papa almost tried to kill me!” Kotoko still held that gentle, peppy smile that she had held ever since they had met. It was so alien and grossly contrasted the words she was spewing that Kaede felt her stomach churn with nausea, and this time she knew it wasn’t because of the concussion.

 

Kaito knelt on the other side of Kaede. He laid his own hand over Kaede’s, so gentle and steadying that Kaede felt like everything was alright for a brief second, like a kid hadn’t just cheerily admitted to strangers that her zombified father had tried to kill her, that she hadn’t conceded to being okay with it just from that smile on her face. “Your parents… they’re dead?”

 

“Mhm. You didn’t hear me? Well, it’s okay! Anyways…” she stared at the stool she had been on earlier and then the cabinet. Her foot nudged the small pocket flashlight right next to her, the beam still on and shining directly onto Kaede’s knee. “... can I have some food now? Then I’ll be on my way, I promise!”

 

… survivors have to stick together, right? On the rare occasion Shuichi or Kaito had teased the idea of a literal zombie apocalypse happening, they had always formed battle plans: Shuichi often opted on the side of logic so he wasn’t fond of _too_ many people in a group at once, but Kaito tempted more on the side of humanity and morality.

 

She looked at him. In the midst of their worst nightmare, she wondered if he’d say the same now.

 

“Hey… Kaito,” she started. Kaito perked to attention and stopped staring at Kotoko to instead peer at her, his face scrunched to form wrinkles on his forehead. “We can’t leave her on her own, right?”

 

“She is just a kid.”

 

“Right! So since she’s a kid it’s our responsibility as adults to take care of her, right?”

 

Kaito grinned nice and bright, shooting her the exact smile that students and teachers alike fawned over whenever he’d make a goal. Kaede had long since been resistant to its’ charms, but nonetheless she found herself matching him. “That’s right! You’re speaking my language, Kaede!”

 

“Um…” Kotoko spoke up for the first time in the whole exchange, and both Kaede’s and Kaito’s heads shot to her like they had forgotten she was even there. “Are you offering me a place to stay then?”

 

When Kaede glanced at Kaito once more, she saw him nod with affirmation. That was all the inspiration she needed. She turned back to Kotoko and placed a delicate hand on her shoulder, like she was afraid she would break under the weight. “Of course! Don’t worry about it, ‘k? You can have that twinkie now.”

 

“Alright then! Thanks!” and like that Kotoko was back on the stool, fiddling around in the cabinet like she was at her grandmother’s house and she had just been given permission to eat all the candies she wanted.

 

A moment later she was stood on the ground, half of a twinkie buried in her mouth and the rest hanging limp around it. Like an actress who had just performed her last show, she gave a low curtsy and scampered out of the kitchen, barely avoiding the stool as she headed into the dark abyss the rest of the house provided.

 

In the entire scuffle, they had failed to notice that Maki was leant against the staircase, a pistol resting lazily in her hand as the light from the kitchen endowed her, shining a spotlight on her as though she weren’t in an otherwise empty house living the life of a hermit. “So my opinion didn’t matter then, huh?”

 

Kaede leant against her lamp as she struggled to get up, battling the migraine threatening to emerge from behind her eyes. “Oh, well she’s a kid, you know? I’m sure you wouldn’t want her to be alone, right?”

 

“Why wouldn’t I?” she turned the pistol over in her palm almost absentmindedly, but Kaede didn’t fail to notice how her grip tightened, how her finger inched closer to the trigger, like she was actually contemplating shooting either her or Kotoko. “She’ll just be a drain on our resources.”

 

“Maki…” Kaito had stood up next to Kaede, stalking towards Maki like he could actually convince her to change her mind. “You know you don’t really feel that way. C’mon, Maki Roll! She’s just a kid.”

 

“Don’t…” Maki stopped short, and this time she started walking directly towards the two of them. “We don’t even know her. I was here the whole time. Don’t you find it suspicious how smiley she was when she talked about her parents? That’s _not_ just a kid.”

 

Kaede stopped short from saying her next prepared line, knowing it would only harm the situation more than amend it. She ghosted her fingers on the lamp in time with the grand melody playing in her head, wishing more than anything that she hadn’t decided to leave her phone upstairs and turned off for the night. After a moment, she swallowed the knot in her throat and said, “aren’t you being a little harsh on her? Imagine being her age and thrown into this hellhole, imagine seeing your parents turned into zombies and imagine them trying to kill you. There’s no way we can just leave her!” as she spoke her resolve built, and to an unobservant bystander she might’ve even came across as though she didn’t have a concussion. But Kaede knew better, and she knew that leaning on the lamp as her only support made Maki look down on her more than anything.

 

Nevertheless, she stared deep into Maki’s eyes, searching and pleading for a sense of humanity. Maki stared back, albeit far less hopefully; her gaze narrowed as it met Kaede’s and the very edges of her teeth poked through her lips - it reminded Kaede suddenly of Himiko, down on all fours as she growled and hissed at Kaede seconds after she had broken her nose. Her heart stilled at the unwanted memory.

 

“Hey…” at that moment, Kaito had come between them, hands held up in a placating manner that was more mocking than anything, but Kaede understood the gesture all the same. She was letting her own personal feelings get in the way. She had to be a leader. A leader doesn’t allow disagreements or differing opinions to interfere with group dynamics. That was one thing her small stint as class representative had taught her.

 

So Kaede did away with her pride, took four elegant steps towards Maki, and held out her hand to her. Maki broke her gaze to instead stare at her hand, one eyebrow lifted as though she was unfamiliar with the gesture. “I’m sorry,” she said, and she hoped Maki didn’t notice the hitch in her voice as she said that. “We didn’t think of what you’d say and that was careless of us. From now on we’ll value your opinion just as much as our own, so long as you do the same. Agreed?”

 

Maki didn’t stop staring at her hand. A moment later, her gaze travelled to her face, eyes just as narrowed as before when they had had their nonverbal battle of the wits. Then it travelled to her hand again. Then back. Kaede let the smallest of smiles grace her face, just wide enough to where she knew her cheeks turned just a hint salmon red - _Shuichi had commented on it once before, she prayed that he was safe_ \- and the dimples in the corners of her lips shone bright.

 

A moment later, Maki was grasping onto her hand and her tight grip conveyed more annoyance than anything else. Nonetheless, Kaede shook it just as she would shake an interviewer’s hand, added with just enough spirit to show hospitality. She didn’t doubt that the difference would be lost on Maki, but she found herself not caring too much about that little tidbit so long as Maki eased up. “... agreed.”

 

Despite not letting go of her hand - and perhaps that was her first mistake - Kaede continued with: “we have outvoted you on whether Kotoko gets to stay or not. Both Kaito and I say she stays.” She challenged Kaito to disagree, staring into his eyes over Maki’s shoulder and trying to convey everything she refused to through words. Kaito’s hands were still held up like he was being arrested, the smallest of frowns gracing his lips. She decided to ignore that. “That’s two to one. Sorry Maki.”

 

Maki’s grip tightened just so. With the slightest of huffs, she released Kaede’s hand, and Kaede could see the white outlines of her fingers where she pressed in just a little too hard. “I still don’t trust her,” she said, so matter-of-factly it was as though she knew Kotoko personally from another time. “Don’t blame me if this all goes south.”

 

So Kaede smiled, nodded, and batted her eyelashes just enough to lower Maki’s guard. “Don’t worry! It’ll all be fine! And if things do go wrong, you’ll be the one that gets to say ‘I told you so’, right?”

 

“If we’re alive.”

 

“Huh?”

 

Maki turned on her heel and started striding up the stairs, so lightly that Kaede couldn’t hear the creakiness that had plagued her and Kaito when they went about doing their business. “I’ll trust you for now,” she murmured, “but don’t be stupid.” And like that, she retreated up the stairs at such a pace and such a low volume that Kaede wondered how she did it.

 

Still, Kaede was stumped.

 

_Don’t be stupid._

 

What was _that_ supposed to mean?

 

* * *

 

When Kaito woke up again, it was six in the morning. For a blissful moment, he laid there as the world turned around him, oblivious to all that was wrong outside. He thought he was in his own bed for a moment, waiting for his grandmother to inevitably come in and wake him up for school, and then he would realize that it was Friday today and that it was his last day of school for the week; relieved, he would add an extra dose of spunk to his day, even more than he already displayed.

 

When he met up with Shuichi and Kaede at school, he would greet them like he had hadn’t seen them in eons. He’d discuss his plans to watch the Walking Dead with Shuichi over the weekend, and then Kaede, oblivious to their very important discussion of cool ass zombies, would jump in and start discussing her upcoming recital. She’d hand Shuichi and Kaito an earbud each and play the Spotify versions of the songs she was prepping, promising to show them her own version of them when she was “more prepared”.

 

So Kaito, oblivious to all, reached over and took his smartphone from the nightstand, just as he would every morning, to browse through Instagram and check the texts that he might’ve received over the night - usually from a Kaede either doped up on Nyquil or sometimes Shuichi on the odd night that he happened to accidentally pull all nighters watching Jacksepticeye or Markiplier.

 

When he saw a voicemail left a bit over an hour ago from Shuichi, he thought nothing of it. He raised his thumb, prepared to just listen to him _totally-not-crying_ over the ending to one of the newer games that had just come out. He readied himself, lowered his finger, and-

 

_it all came rushing back._

 

Holy crap. They were in a zombie apocalypse. _Shuichi’s alive._

 

In his panic to listen to the voicemail, he completely shot out of bed and nearly dropped his phone. He scrambled to catch it as it bounced between his hands, putting it to his ear as he clicked for the voicemail to start.

 

_“Kaito! Oh my god, I got through. We’re-”_

 

and then the call dropped.

 

“Shit!” Kaito couldn’t help the profanity that slipped through his lips, he just wanted to know that Shuichi was alright! Shuichi’s call may have dropped, but maybe he could have better luck!

 

He lowered the phone from his ear and went to his quick save contacts. The action itself took ten seconds longer than usual, and he didn’t know if it was due to his shaking hands - it was excitement, he reassured himself, _Shuichi’s fine_ \- or if it was due to the sudden unease that gripped his chest and played his heartstrings like a fiddle.

 

He clicked Shuichi’s contact, clicked on the call icon, and the only noise he heard on the other end was static. Gone were the usual rings that accompanied a call he would make, gone was the anticipation he would feel as he waited for the other person to pick up the call. _Maybe the cell towers are out of whack. Shuichi’s call dropped._

 

He tried again.

 

And again.

 

And _again._

 

Each time the result was the same with little variation. On his fourth attempt - _or was it his fifth?_ \- the static had stopped and the call was just dead silent, like how normal phones calls would act when they were having trouble getting reception but were desperately trying to connect to the other person’s phone. Then the static started up again, a fizzly white noise that resembled the sound his TV would make when he landed on a channel that wouldn’t get reception.

 

On his seventh try, his phone sounded like it connected for a brief, beautiful second - the call made the semblance of a ring as it connected with Shuichi’s phone, faint and low and glitchy, but still there - and then it _dropped._ His phone completely gave up on him, forcing him out of the call just as he had almost connected with Shuichi.

 

“No!” in the midst of his frustration, he threw his phone hard and fast against the opposite wall. It bounced and clattered as it barrel rolled across the floor and out of Kaito’s line of sight. He didn’t care. He had just destroyed his only chance of connecting with Shuichi or his grandparents or _anyone_ but he just didn’t _care._

 

No, he doesn’t lie to himself - he wasn’t like a certain _someone._ He did care. He cared a _lot._ He cared so much that as soon as the phone stopped rolling he was out of bed and on his hands and knees, peeking under the bed in the hopes of seeing a faint light that indicated his phone was still okay.

 

A green, too bright light peeked out at him. It was okay - for right now - just _very_ damaged. He could work with that. He shot his arm under the bed and dragged it out, taking a peek at the cracked surface and the green, occasionally violet lines that marred it. The wiring was all kinds of messed up. Dammit, this was his fault.

 

Nonetheless, he attempted to tap onto his recent taps to listen to Shuichi’s voicemail once more. The lights blinded him and so most of what he was clicking was blind - he accidentally got on Twitter once, only to see exactly one person had tweeted since the outbreak started and it wasn’t Shuichi.

 

Eventually he did manage to get to his voicemail, still crouched on the floor all huddled over a broken phone, and he put on speaker as it played.

 

_“Kaito! Oh my god, I got through. We’re-”_

 

He pressed play again.

 

_“Kaito! Oh my god, I got through. We’re-”_

 

And again.

 

_“Kaito! Oh my god, I got through. We’re-”_

 

And then right before he pressed play again, his finger hovered over the button, a sudden realization dawning on him as the gears in his mind worked. There was a faint noise in the background when Shuichi was talking - a voice almost reminiscent of a little angel’s, and one that was all too familiar to him.

 

_He said “we’re”._

 

When Kaito played the voicemail again, he let Shuichi’s voice drift through his ears as he listened intently to the background, yearning for a semblance of confirmation for his suspicion.

 

_“That pussy in my mouth had me lost for words-”_

 

It was Kokichi. Shuichi was with Kokichi.

 

That didn’t make any sense. Shuichi _hated_ Kokichi, and the same could be said vice versa. If Kaito were in Shuichi’s shoes, after what Kokichi did he’d never team up with him, zombie apocalypse be damned, unless he absolutely had to. Granted even if he weren’t in Shuichi’s shoes he would never team up with Kokichi, but that was besides the point.

 

So why were they together? Did they make up?

 

He doubted that.

 

He felt like he should be grateful for someone being by Shuichi’s side - especially someone like Kokichi, even if he was a manipulative piece of shit he was smart and he definitely wasn’t out of shape - but he felt nothing but regret. His hands grew sweaty and he rubbed them on his pants leg in a desperate attempt to get rid of the ugly feeling.

 

 _He_ should be there, both him and Kaede should, they practically left him for dead. Kaito knew from the get go that Shuichi would survive - or at least he liked to think he would - he was too intelligent not to, he probably caught onto the sound detection immediately. Someone like _Kokichi_ would let him die. If it was between him and Shuichi, he would run off as soon as things looked dire and wouldn’t look back. Kaito wouldn’t do that. Kaede wouldn’t do that. They were good friends - scratch that, good _people._ Kokichi wasn’t.

 

Overthinking it would get him nowhere. He had to put faith in Shuichi - he was capable, he wouldn’t let himself get killed because of Kokichi’s actions.

 

_“Kaito! Oh my god, I got through. We’re-”_

 

Just over an hour ago Shuichi was alive and breathing. His heart was pumping. His blood was flowing through his body. He wasn’t one of those _things_ and he was moving and living. He was fine. He was going to be fine.

 

When he chanced a look at the digital clock on the nightstand, he saw thirty minutes had past since he had first woken up. Almost on cue, his stomach grumbled and moaned, like it had a mind of its own and was barely deciding to inform Kaito of its’ status now that he was off the phone, quite literally.

 

Now that he thought about it, he didn’t recall eating last night either. Perhaps that was part of the problem.

 

So Kaito grasped onto the edge of the bed, heaving himself up with one arm as his free hand held his broken phone. For a second he considered bringing his phone with him - Shuichi might call back, after all - but his phone was only on five percent and he _really_ didn’t want to waste the last of his battery on listening to Shuichi’s voicemail, no matter how much it reassured him.

 

He dropped his phone on the bed; it softly bounced and the green-violet lights mocked him. His house was just next door, he had to stop there for clothes anyways, he’d just grab his charger then. Then he’d be able to listen to Shuichi’s voicemail as much as he wanted. Maybe him and Kaede both could, it could be like a daily ritual of sorts - just until they met up with Shuichi. He couldn’t be too far away.

 

They’d find him.

 

Kaito trudged out of his room and into the living room, immediately spotting Kotoko laid out on the couch like a cat, a shock blanket draped over her small body - lord knows how she found that. It was almost surreal to see her so quiet and without that constant, polite little grin on her face. Her face was twisted in a slight frown, and the skin between her eyebrows folded together, giving her the appearance that she was deep in thought, but Kaito knew better.

 

_She was having a nightmare._

 

She’s just a kid, of course she was. Kaito didn’t know what Maki was thinking. She wasn’t _dangerous,_ she was _ten._

 

For a brief moment, he debated waking her up. And he almost did, his hands were already hovered over Kotoko’s shoulder as she stirred in the midst of her sleep, squinting her eyes like she was being blinded by some harsh light, when a gentle - almost feminine, but not quite - hand was laid on his shoulder.

 

“I wouldn’t do that.” When he turned, he was greeted by Maki’s face, and in the dull single overhead light of an otherwise blackened room, she looked nearly angelic. “She could end up attacking you if you woke up her now.”

 

And then he realized that she was Maki - she might’ve been one of his closest friends, but she had wanted to kill a _kid._ She wasn’t angelic. There was good in her somewhere - he just knew it, and he was _never_ \- almost never - wrong, but at the current moment he could only find himself skeptical of her solution to Kotoko’s nightmare. It just didn’t seem _right._ No, it didn’t not seem right, it _wasn’t_ right.

 

“... she’s having a bad dream.”

 

“I know. It’s still dangerous.”

 

“She’s _ten._ ”

 

“Your point is?”

 

When he looked at Kotoko again, her face had evened out - a near childish innocence gracing her face as her features smoothed and her eyelids unclenched. If Kaito didn’t know better he might’ve thought she was dead, though he really didn’t want to think about _that_ of all things right now.

 

“See? She’s better now,” observed Maki, her voice just as flat and monotone as before. He had no idea what to make of that, but he’d rather just believe that she cared about Kotoko getting some sleep - it was better than the alternative.

 

A sudden thought occurred to him. “Hey… Maki Roll.”

 

“Don’t call me that.” After a beat of silence, Maki continued, “what?”

 

“... did you give Kotoko that blanket?”

 

“No. I don’t even know her, why would I?”

 

Kaito turned around to face her, searching her face for any sign that she might’ve been lying. After years of dealing with Kokichi, he’d think that he would be better at telling whether a person was telling the truth or not. Instead, as he stared at a blank, emotionless face that had little to no tells telling of its’ true nature, Kaito was stumped. Perhaps he should just do what he always had: stuck with his gut. That was his best weapon.

 

So as Maki stared at him, waiting for an answer, he merely gave her a smile and said, “alright! Just checking! Hm… I wonder where she got it from then? Ah well, I suppose she just found it, right?”

 

Maki stared at him still, like she hadn’t even heard him in the first place - really, the only tell that she had was a singular raised eyebrow, as though she was skeptical of his state. “... right.”

 

Maki really wasn’t a bad person - he knew that for a fact. An apocalypse would be stressful on anyone. Kaede had acted oddly that morning too, and normally she was the single most fair and understanding person he knew. They had all seen too much gore for a lifetime yesterday - he and Maki had both dirtied their hands, too. Tensions were high and everyone’s survival mode was cranked up to the highest setting. That was all it was.

 

_That was all it was._

 

* * *

 

“It’s… it’s really Shuichi. And Kokichi? But why?”

 

As the late afternoon sun travelled across the horizon and set in the west, Kaede huddled around a broken cell phone in a position that was due to give her back troubles later in life, hanging onto every word her friend said as though her life depended on it. Kaito held onto the phone as it threatened to topple out of his hand, bound to him by a single charger cord.

 

Kaito shrugged in such a way that it appeared as though he was trying to be nonchalant. “I don’t know. They were in the same class, they must’ve just escaped together.” After a moment, he added, almost as an afterthought: “Kaede, I’m sure it’s not-”

 

“I know, I know,” she breathed out, almost like a whisper. She moved to cross her legs on her bed, thankful that Kaito had thought to bring her a spare pair of his grandma’s pajama pants - a skirt looked nice and all but it wasn’t exactly practical, much less _comfortable._ Thank heavens his grandma was such a small lady, she doubted that she’d be able to fit into something _Kaito’s_ size. “It’s nothing. I’m glad he’s with someone. It’s not safe to be on your own, you know.”

 

Kaito set his phone down on the white covers, absentmindedly playing the voicemail again as his thumb brushed over the play button. “Even though-”

 

_“That pussy in my mouth had me lost for words-”_

 

After a beat, oblivious to why the both of them had heard Kokichi’s rapping _skills_ so distinctly that time, Kaede commented, “... he doesn’t have the best taste in music, huh?”

 

“He’s definitely not into Beethoven.”

 

“Well you like pop music, so…”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

 

And at that Kaede merely grinned coyly, avoiding Kaito’s intense gaze as it burned into her soul. If she insulted the Spice Girls she’d be _dead_ . “Oh nothing, nothing.” So instead of taking the obvious bait, Kaede merely waved her hand and batted Kaito’s question away and out the partially opened window. She imagined it flying out over the heads of the zombies and popping onto them, flooding them with sudden human words and quite _possibly_ giving them a glimpse into Kaito’s mind - maybe they’d regain their humanity from it.

 

Yeah, she was _really_ bored.

 

She wouldn’t label herself as hyperactive, but she definitely wasn’t content cooped up in an unfamiliar two-story house as lord knows what happened outside. Shuichi was alive - she wanted to _find him._

 

She knew Kaito almost as well as she knew herself, so when a mirthful smile began to spread onto his face and a sharp, almost forced, chuckle came from his lips she knew that she had done her job. And when she started laughing right with him and as tears spilt down their cheeks from the mutual laugh attack, as they started clutching their guts as they writhed with giggles and snorts, Kaede was a little less bored and a lot less scared of their future, of what might happen to them when they’re inevitably forced to leave when Kaito’s plan to “wait until it all blew over” inevitably failed.

 

In that moment, as the setting sun descended down upon the both of them, they were just two best friends laughing over the stupidest joke imaginable.

 

* * *

 

Kaito found Maki’s old coloring book.

 

It was downright _confusing_ why Maki had a coloring book of all things hidden in a guest room. He had just been curious, he’d only wanted to take a look around the room since nothing there actually _belonged_ to anyone. At least, that’s what he had assumed. On the floor obscured by a dusty, worn dresser that looked like it belonged more to the 1970s than the 2000s, a kid-ish coloring book that had a pixelated, poorly drawn cover of Barney and friends laid on the floor, gathering dirt and bacteria like it hadn’t been used in ages. Considering Maki, he was more prone to the belief that it _hadn’t_ been used in ages.

 

That just didn’t explain why she hadn’t thrown it away. That seemed out of character. Maki had always been full of surprises, he had no doubt in his mind that she wasn’t as tough as she liked to make herself appear. If he added the fact that she was _sentimental_ to that, it was kind of endearing.

 

So without a single thought in his mind that what he was doing might’ve been wrong or intrusive, he scooped up the coloring book, stepped out into the light of the hallway, and started turning the pages. Uneven, unrealistic colors marred the pages and went out of the lines, yet every single page was signed in rough cursive with a red sharpie: “Maki”, like every piece itself was a masterpiece and she was a professional artist.

 

He couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped out of his mouth and he really couldn’t help the absolute _adoration_ that flooded him. He bet she had been a cute kid, if this was anything to go by.

 

So he kept flipping the pages, watching as her coloring shifted into different styles or became a bit more personalized, as the colors began to permanently stay inside the lines and as her cursive became more refined and practiced.

 

And then it stopped. As he turned the page from one that was full of colors that contrasted just right and a cursive signature that seemed almost too perfect, she had completely stopped using the book halfway through. That was completely normal. Kids lost interest and moved onto new things all the time, he couldn’t even count the amount of times he had just one day forgot to finish a game or finish a book - sans space books, there was no way he’d ever stop reading that shit - but all of the sudden his mood just _plummeted._

 

_Why had she stopped?_

 

He didn’t even notice when Kotoko had snuck up to the side of him, her footsteps so light and soft that he doubted he would’ve noticed her even if he had been paying attention. He only realized she was there when she softly poked his jeans, her finger dipping into his skin just enough to jolt him.

 

“Uh…” she started, eyes blown wide and her trademark grin missing, instead formed into a small ‘o’ so perfectly that it seemed rehearsed. As her mouth was hanging open, she shoved a potato chip into it and chewed.  “Are you okay? You’re acting weird.”

 

So Kaito just smiled as much as it pained him, he smiled and smiled and let his grin grow and his teeth shine brighter even when Kotoko squinted at him like she didn’t believe him. After a moment, her normal grin was back: the kind of grin a child should be wearing when they were oblivious to the world’s horrors, the kind of smile he bet Maki would wear when she was a child.

 

Kotoko bent down to look at the cover of the book, her hands clapping together when she saw exactly what it was. “Oh! Can I borrow that? Pretty, pretty _please?_ I love Barney!” and then she looked up at him with such kid-like hope - he swore her eyes were sparkling and glittering and everything from the way she looked at him - that he couldn’t just say _no._

 

So he settled with, “this is Maki’s. I’d let you, but maybe you should go ask her first.”

 

“Hm?” she frowned and it was the first time that he had ever seen that expression cross her face. It was almost surreal. “Maki? Why? She’s scary…”

 

“Well…” holding the coloring book in one hand and saving the page with his thumb, Kaito put his other hand behind his head like he was confused. “She’s not, you just have to ask her _nicely,_ Kotoko.”

 

“But-”

“ _Kotoko_.”

 

Kotoko puffed out her cheeks so much that she looked like a little, pink water balloon. Holding out her hand, she said, “... fine.” When Kaito didn’t give it to her, she flicked her wrist impatiently, expectantly, waiting for him to give her the coloring book.

 

At his raised eyebrow she stomped her foot. “Come on! I said I’ll do it!”

 

He nodded towards the direction of the kitchen, where he just knew Maki was getting ready to prepare dinner. “Let me watch you.”

 

“... why?”

He raised his eyebrow once more and at that Kotoko stilled, gave a chest heaving side, and spun on her heel to march towards the kitchen. When he had entered, he already saw Kotoko grasping tightly onto Maki’s shirt. “Maki, _please?_ I promise I won’t tear any pages! I’ll be good!”

 

“What are you even…” when the sound of another set of footsteps entered the threshold, Maki turned around to see who it was, oblivious to what she might see. So when she saw Kaito there, an old forgotten coloring book in hand, he saw her gaze widen just a fraction of an inch - in recognition, he would think - but the expression was gone as soon as it had come. A minute later, her eyes were lidded in a bored, fixed expression as per usual and her gaze had shifted back to Kotoko, back to those big doe eyes and her lip that she grinded between her teeth in anticipation. “Go ahead. I don’t care.”

 

Kotoko immediately pounced on Maki, throwing her arms around her waist and digging her face into the fabric of her shirt. Maki actually squealed, yes, _squealed,_ but she stifled the noise by a firm hand to her mouth a second later. Kaito really tried to contain his laugh, he _really tried,_ but he couldn’t help it as a sharp chuckle came out of his mouth and a barrage of snorts tumbled through his nostrils.

 

At the noise, Maki turned back, fire in her gaze as she used her hand to push away Kotoko’s head. Kotoko held on, and he had no doubt that Maki would be swung around like a rag doll if Maki was a few inches shorter and a lot less physically able. “Thank you! You’re really nice! I mean, I thought you were scary because you have red eyes and demons also have red eyes, but I mean, I guess I shouldn’t judge a book by its’ cover! Adults are right about _one thing_ , at least!”

 

“... whatever.”

 

Finally Kotoko released Maki, practically _skipped_ over to Kaito, and promptly plucked the coloring book out of his slackened grip. As she moonwalked out of the kitchen, she lifted up her newfound coloring book and showed Maki. “Look! It’s all adorbs!” and with that, she skipped out of the kitchen, twirling around in her skirt a few times for extra effect.

 

After her departure, Kaito and Maki stood for a brief few seconds in mutual silence. Kaito was still smiling at the girl, reminiscing at how she had been so flustered over a _kid hugging her._ Sure, it was adorable, but Maki definitely hadn’t seemed like the type to care about _that_ of all things.

 

No matter how she displayed herself, he wondered if she had even changed that much since she was younger. Which brought him to the question…

 

“Why’d you stop?”

 

Maki sighed and turned towards him. He couldn’t hope to match the warning intensity of those crimson eyes, but he’d damn well try. “Why’d you stop? Coloring.”

“... oh. Well…” she began to fiddle with her own hair, tugging her hands through one tail as they worked out the tangles. “... a lot of Barney’s actors are pedophiles. I don’t want to support that.”

 

“By coloring?”

 

“Yes. By coloring.”

 

Somehow he didn’t quite believe her, but he’d let it pass. He nudged his shoulder in the direction Kotoko went off to. “What about her then? Why’d you let her take it to color with?”

 

“... she was being annoying. It was easier to say yes than no.”

 

“Well,” he hummed and scratched his goatee. “You’re good with kids. You really made her day with that, you know!” And Kaito knew that it wasn’t what she wanted to hear and she’d probably punch him for his next actions, but despite himself he strode over to her and pulled her into a tight, one-armed hug even as she struggled to get away.

 

After a moment, she relaxed and stopped playing with her hair and looked up at him, her cheeks flushed just the slightest bit pink. In the aureate light of the kitchen lamps, her eyes looked so brilliantly red that he stood entranced for a solid second before breaking out of it, turning away and coughing into his fist like he had no idea what was happening to him; to why he felt that way.

 

“... shut up, you idiot.”

 

* * *

 

“We’re already running out of food.”

 

The second night into the zombie apocalypse as Kaede and Kaito sat around a small, dusty breakfast bar, Maki announced the state of their food supply as soon as she started rooting around in the fridge, almost absentmindedly yet sharply, warningly, and immediately Kaede knew just _why_ she had taken on a defensive stance.

 

“Listen, Maki - she’s just been eating snacks. That’s it. It’s not her fault that you needed to buy groceries.”

 

Still with her head planted firmly in the fridge and her hands still rooting around inside it, Maki said, “I didn’t say anything,” and Kaede felt the most random, undue frustration that had ever graced her being. She knocked it off on just the tension of the past couple days - Kaito had told her something similar regarding Maki. It wasn’t _her_ fault, it was the damn apocalypse’s fault.

 

So Kaede decided to let it sit, and it was only after a sharp elbow to the ribs from Kaito that she decided to _possibly_ acknowledge Maki’s retort. She gave him a side glance, and after a roll of his hand and a nudge of his head did she grant him his wishes. “... yeah. Sorry. I jumped the gun a little.”

 

And this time _Maki_ ignored her. This situation wasn’t helping anyone.

 

She continued, “... anyways, what do you think we should do? I know the plan was to wait it out until the zombies starved, but I’m not sure - and no offense, Kaito - that that’s a great plan. We don’t know if they still have needs like normal people. We might have to leave here, or at least get food.” Maki still didn’t respond, like she hadn’t even heard her in the first place. Kaede tapped her finger against the wooden surface, her nail clinking against it and scrapping it ever slightly. “... what do you think, Maki? You have a voice too, ya know.”

 

At exactly that moment, Kotoko practically skipped into the kitchen, coloring book in hand, accessed the situation with a quick glance between Kaede and Maki, and skipped right back out. A moment later, she poked her head back in and motioned to Kaito with a come hither movement of her finger. Immediately Kaede grasped onto the ends of his jacket when he made to get up, nails digging into the fabric as the lint from it went under her nails.

 

Kaito pointed his thumb at Maki, pointed it back at Kaede, and then followed Kotoko out of the kitchen, leaving Kaede to her inevitable demise.

 

Maki seemed not to notice the sudden shift in the air, though by then she had closed the fridge and she had a single cup of noodles in her hand - _she stores noodles in the_ fridge _, the hell?_ \- ready to put in the microwave. What a nutritious dinner.

 

So Kaede just placed her head in her palms, lolling it back and forth as she watched Maki’s back. Her fingers went back to tapping the table. At that moment, she wanted nothing more than to just retreat to her room and put on Mozart or Beethoven or _something_ but her phone was already running low on battery. For a brief, glorious second she debated running to her house and grabbing her own charger like Kaito had, and at that some clothes too, but she just knew that would end badly. Maybe it was the zombies, maybe it was because her house was ten miles away and she was _very_ unathletic and still had a concussion (though that at least appeared to be going away a little, maybe she didn’t have a concussion after all) and a broken nose, who knows.

 

“-are you even listening to me?” Maki’s voice brought her out of her thoughts, all cynical and snarky and full of literally everything Maki.

 

With a start, she realized that she was staring right at the girl; Maki had probably noticed that she was spaced out too. Ah great, that was _fantastic_ for their budding friendship. So ever eloquently, Kaede asked, “hm, huh?”

 

“Ugh, nevermind.”

 

“Wait!” and Kaede _really_ didn’t mean to shout that part - she admitted that was a foolish mistake on her part, especially when a zombie groaned from outside and a bang was heard on the window at the very back of the kitchen, right around where the flower garden would be.

 

Already Maki had a pistol drawn and cocked - _did she just carry those around on her_ \- and pointed firmly at the window in case the glass broke. “Hey, idiot,” she hissed out through gritted teeth, crouched and low to the ground as she gestured for Kaede to do the same. Against her will her limbs complied, folding under her as she crawled on all fours around the breakfast table and closer to Maki.

 

“You know…” she murmured, low and breathy, “that was an accident.”

 

“Yeah. I know.” No reassurances were muttered, not that Kaede expected much different. She simply stared down her barrel as zombie continued banging, attempting desperately to break the glass. If the glass _did_ break, god forbid, then they would have to definitely escape from the house because the sound - paired with Maki’s gun - would no doubt attract the entire horde to them, and by this point there could be _thousands_ of zombies crawling around outside. She really hadn’t bothered to check, she’d rather not face that nightmare if she could help it.

 

As the pounding continued for another couple minutes and the silence drifted on, Kaede felt the tension grow. She could practically see Maki’s veins protruding from how tense her muscles were, though everytime she tried to focus on that Maki immediately noticed and would stifle her curiosity with a piercing glare.

 

Even though it _really_ wasn’t the best time to ask - and she’d blame it on the concussion later - she asked, “... do you have a problem with me or something?”

 

And at that, Maki turned her head slowly to face her, her face pinched so tightly that it appeared like she had just been witness to a particularly disturbing event, looked at her pistol once more, and then turned again to stare at Kaede so utterly, horribly sarcastically that Kaede _almost_ shrank in on herself. Almost. She was Kaede Akamatsu, she wasn’t a person to back down - even if she _really should back down. Like, now._

 

“I’m just… you tried to _kill_ me when I first came here Maki. You would’ve if it hadn’t been for Kaito!” she was still whispering so softly that she was sure only Maki could hear her, but her subconscious mind - well she _hoped_ it was her subconscious mind - made the speed of the knocks on the window subtly increase, the occasional bangs being replaced with a more frequent series of knocks. _It’s just your mind,_ she reassured herself, _nothing’s wrong. You’ll be fine._

 

“Kaede,” began Maki, and now that she thought about it, it was the first time that she’d really heard her utter her name. In a way, it both bettered and worsened the situation. “Do you think this is the right time to be talking about this? It’s not important what I think right now.”

 

“But it does matter, Maki!” she couldn’t help as her voice raised a bit, and it was only after another zombie groan and a light punch on the shoulder from Maki that she regained control of it. “Sorry. Point is, just yesterday you were saying you wanted to be included in the group stuff, right?”

 

“... not really, but go on.”

 

“Okay. So I’m trying to connect with you and you just keep rejecting my advances! What am I supposed to do?”

 

“Uh…” Maki turned away from her to stare down the barrel of the gun again, even though she really wasn’t aiming at anything besides the window and there was no point. She chewed her bottom lip between her teeth. “... I don’t know how to answer that.”

 

“But what do you mean you don’t? You need to tell me why I’m upsetting you!”

 

The knocking increased.

 

“Kaede-”

 

“I just… I feel like I’m doing something wrong?”

 

“Kaede - the window-”

 

“And-”

 

Maki tackled her as a big fist broke through the window next to Kaede and glass went flying in every direction possible. A shard flew across Kaede’s cheek and a sharp sting followed, though Maki suffered the brunt of it, glass shards visible in her ebony hair and when Kaede looked at her hands she saw a couple shards actually _stuck_ in her skin.

 

Crap.

 

Despite her injuries, Maki shot up off of Kaede without missing a beat and fired two rounds into the monster’s fist. At exactly that moment, Kaito came sprinting into the kitchen just as the monster recoiled and moaned from the hit, hammer in hand as he ran up to the window, intent on possibly breaking his wrist, when the zombie lifted his arm up and straight through the glass up to the top of the window like it was paper.

 

They were going to die and it was all Kaede’s fault. If the glass breaking hadn’t alerted the entire horde, Maki’s shots certainly had. And now a big fisted monster-human was raising his leg as though to step through into the house despite having two gaping bullet wounds in his fist, and like the naive hero he was Kaito had a _hammer_ to defend himself with, staring at the zombie like he had absolutely nothing to worry about. It was both admirable and absolutely horrendous.

 

Just as Kaede opened her mouth to shout for him to get the fuck out of the way, Maki was already one step ahead of her. Right as Kaito was raising his hammer to knock against the zombie’s skull, Maki took a step in front of him, raised a gun to the zombie’s temple in one second flat, and pulled the trigger.

 

The zombie fell flush against the ground, brain splattered on the opposite wall from where Maki shot. Her pistol still smoked and if Kaede looked closer she might’ve noticed her hand trembling - though she had the feeling that was more a trick of the eye than anything else.

 

Both of them had acted already. She was being a nuisance, wasn’t she?

 

With that thought in mind, she all but leaped onto her feet just as the gun smoke finally settled and Maki had lowered her gun, an order just on the tip of her tongue as she heard the steady groans and moans of an approaching horde. “We have to leave. Now.”

 

And like that she was off, sprinting up the stairs as a knock on the door was heard. How lucky were they that Kaito had thought to bring an extra few backpacks from his house? They had both forgotten their backpacks at school, and then Maki didn’t even _go_ to school, but at least they had storage space now. They needed absolutely every resource they could get.

 

Just as Kaede was rushing back down the stairs, a couple of backpacks secured over her shoulders and her phone already in her back pocket and her earbuds in her ears and Spotify turned on, Kaito came running past her only to grab a clear backpack off of her left shoulder. He offered only a small explanation of “someone’s gotta watch the kid” before taking off again, up to god knows where, like he was already familiar with the place.

 

Both Kaito and Maki were faster than her. She supposed that made sense. But he _had_ left her with another two backpacks. Odd.

 

At least, that was what she _thought_ before Maki also came running past her, planted an extra pistol in her hand like she actually had some semblance of an idea of how to use it, and stripped Kaede of her backpacks. From the little glimpse she spotted of Maki before she had completely taken off, her lips were pressed into a straight thin line and her eyebrows were drawn low. Although Kaede liked to have confidence that they would go on to live another day after this one, she had the feeling that Maki would absolutely _despise_ her once this fiasco was over.

 

On the couch sat Kotoko, kicking her feet as though she had no idea of the dire state their world was in and how any minute she could be swallowed whole by an entire horde of zombies. At least, that’s what Kaede would’ve thought if not for the small frown she spotted on her face a moment after she caught a glimpse of her face. At that moment, she was reminded of her own words just a couple days ago - _she’s just a kid -_ she was just acting the part, wasn’t she?

 

“Hey, Kotoko,” whispered Kaede, her voice so low that for a moment, and then two, she doubted Kotoko would even hear her. Then the girl slowly turned her head to face her, so slowly that Kaede was reminded vaguely of a horror film she had watched on a date with Shuichi once - and she _hated_ horror flicks - but then when Kaede finally caught sight of her lips once more, she was smiling. The stark contrast might’ve actually been more horrifying than she originally had anticipated. “We have to-”

 

Glass shattered and Kaede _almost_ screamed. Right as the first squeal came out, Kaede fastened her palm over her mouth as the world spun and her legs almost gave out and _oh god oh god oh god a zombie was right behind Kotoko._

 

A female zombie had broken in through the living room window, all bloody and drenched in fluids that Kaede couldn’t put a finger in and didn’t quite want to. A few glass shards stuck to her scalp and her legs, poking out of her skin almost comically, like one would imagine a fictional flamboyant movie villain to suffer just before death. But the zombie wasn’t dead, it was very much alive, and it was just barely separated from Kotoko by a single glass coffee table that was too thin to do much else than offer a slight barrier between a zombie wearing a much too-innocent sweater vest and a little girl who was much too young to die.

 

From the little she had interacted with Kotoko, she already had a feeling that the kid was smart, as smart as a kid could be, anyhow. So she wasn’t particularly surprised to see Kotoko simply sat there, head still turned to Kaede with that smile still plastered onto her pink lips, like nothing had happened and nothing _will_ happen. The only tell that she might’ve been thinking anything differently was a single bead of sweat that rolled from her hairline to her chin, but the A/C was broken so for all Kaede knew her acting (hell, whose even to say it was acting?) was just _that_ good.

 

So Kaede ignored Kotoko and watched.

 

She watched as the zombie stared at Kotoko but made no move to actually bite her. She stared and stared with such milky eyes that Kaede knew this zombie in particularly wasn’t any different from any of the others they had faced off against, it was just as blind and dumb and _deadly_ as the rest of them.

 

Kaede tried with all her might to still her breathing with her hand, but if anything that made her breathing _speed up._ The zombie tilted her head just so in the direction of Kaede, like she could hear her every movement and her every breath and even the sound of her fingers moving against one another. In the very depths of her mind, she thought maybe they _could_ and she was the fool here, underestimating a _zombie_ of all things.

 

In her other hand - the one that held Maki’s pistol - her finger drifted towards the trigger. Could she do it? Could she _kill?_

 

The memory of Himiko dead on the ground, of her guts splattered onto the end of a stool and Kaito’s collarbone and his own reassurances to himself flooded into her mind. She didn’t want to have to take up Kaito’s burden.

 

Then the memory of Himiko _down on all fours_ and ready to _kill her_ came to mind. Kotoko was close to Himiko’s size. She didn’t want to see Kotoko become that - she didn’t want to see her become a _monster._ Her finger drifted closer to the trigger.

 

Yeah, she could. She could kill.

 

Despite that, her hands wouldn’t stop trembling as she lifted up her pistol, as she stared down the barrel, as she lined up her shot with the zombie’s head, took a deep breath, and-

 

Kaito came sprinting into the room.

 

His reddened face screamed with exertion as he lifted up the ends of his hammer and jumped over the couch, ready to bring it down to scoop out the brains of the zombie, to crack open its’ skull and watch as blood cascaded down onto her sweater vest and he became covered with gore.

 

The sound of his knees connecting with the ground provoked the zombie’s interest. In a split second, as Kaito brought himself to his feet and the zombie lunged over the coffee table towards him, he held up the ends of his hammer and let the zombie _impale_ _herself_ on to it.

 

It was both fascinating and utterly horrifying.

 

For a short moment, all was silent. All that could be heard was Kaito’s heavy panting, his eyes blown wide and his pupils dilated and everything about him screaming _killer._ Then he held onto the zombie’s head as he scooped the edge of his hammer out, a strong scent of gore and blood mixing into the air as the remains of the zombie’s brains flew onto him. The zombie fell to the ground, painting the wood a scarlet red as Kaito stood over it, still breathing like he had almost forgotten how to, the edge of his hammer stained with blood and the handle in not much better shape.

 

“Hey, Kaito…” began Kaede, inching closer to the couch. Kotoko was still staring straight forward, though her smile had completely disappeared. Kaede’s pulse tripled; she could feel the reverberations through her ribs and in her heart and _oh crap this was bad bad bad._ “Kaito… are you okay?”

He snapped out of his daze, looked at his hammer, and then dropped it. “I’m… I’m fine.” After just a moment’s hesitation, he reached up to pull off a spare backpack - his hands were _trembling_ \- and tossed her one of the ones that Maki had taken from her, a black mesh backpack with a few tears in the lining, yet she had no doubt would carry out its’ duty as a backpack for at least another year so long as they didn’t overstuff it.

 

“Mine is already full,” when he turned around for emphasis, Kaede saw his clothes - and the set of her clothes from yesterday and his grandmother’s clothes - stuffed in, a few hastily folded but otherwise taking up much more room than they could afford. “It’s your turn. Maki said to raid the kitchen, but… uh.” He rubbed his chin. “Maybe I should do that instead? The window’s busted,” he said, like she wasn’t fully aware Maki had given her literally the _worst job possible._

 

She’d show her.

 

She merely shook her head, tossed her backpack over her shoulders and readied herself to bolt. She spared a glance at Kotoko, far too used to that grin she opted to use when she was scared to feel anything but guilty. Kotoko stared at her still, through those doe-like, too innocent eyes. Her mouth formed a gentle ‘o’, like she was considering saying something but she was unsure of whether or not she should.

 

Against her better judgement, she knelt besides Kotoko and placed a single palm on her head, long pianist fingers rubbing her scalp in time with the music that poured from her earbuds into her ears. Moonlight Sonata 3rd Movement. Fitting, she supposed.

 

“Hey…” she whispered, her voice reminiscent of an elderly lady comforting a dying dog. “I’ll be back in a second, alright? Kaito will take care of you for now. I’ll get you some of those Red Vines before we leave, too! I know you don’t like them, but…”

 

Kotoko nodded, a mirthful grin on her face as she regarded Kaede. “Alright, thanks Kaede! I’ll be right here. Now hurry up before those zombies come in,” she said it so playfully that Kaede almost forgot the reality behind her statement, but once she realized just how grave the situation was she was up like a rocket, granting Kaito a single pat of solidarity before shooting past him and towards the kitchen. She was much more loud than she should’ve been regarding the situation - and that showed when those couple zombies that had been banging on the front door increased their speed, one in particular beating the door like they were a kid on Halloween - but she couldn’t stop her feet from stomping as she skidded into the kitchen and ran towards the cupboards.

 

The window still sat agape and shattered, a dead big-fisted zombie in its’ wake. (She immediately shushed the thought, but she couldn’t help and thank the fact that he was so big that other zombies would trip over him before they could get to her.) From her viewpoint she could see other zombies milling about only a few feet from the house, heads tilted towards the window as though they were contemplating going towards it. She increased her speed.

 

Maki really hadn’t been lying when she said that they were almost out of food. When she glanced through the fridge she saw nothing but a couple sets of vegetables - carrots and celery, of all things - a single slab of meat defrosting, and an almost gone carton of milk that looked like it might be well past its’ expiration date. None of which were suitable for long journeys.

 

The cupboard was her next option. True to form, she wasn’t surprised to see most of the snacks were gone - crap, maybe Maki was right when she said Kotoko had been eating most of their supply - only a single packet of Red Vines and some random smarties remaining. She tossed them in her bag.

 

Next were the cupboards under the sink. Thankfully, she was able to find a couple chicken noodle soups, corn, and a few other assorted vegetables and the like - not much really, but enough to survive a couple days if they really, _really_ rationed it. Maybe she’d have a talk with Kotoko later - secretly.

 

The zombies had drifted closer in the time spent between her rooting in the cupboards and the fridge - perhaps she hadn’t closed the covers as soft as she had thought, maybe a couple of those zombies had as hyper-sensitive hearing as those big-fisted freaks. Who knows. Nevertheless, just as she was leaving the kitchen with her bag of goods wrapped securely over her shoulders Kaito, Kotoko, and Maki had come rushing past her.

 

Sparing her a quick look, Maki nodded to the staircase as though she would actually be able to tell what the hell they were doing. It wasn’t until Kotoko grabbed hold of her hoodie sleeve that she snapped out of her zombie-induced trance, listening to the footfalls of Maki and Kaito as they headed up a creaky staircase for what might’ve been the last time.

 

_She’d really miss those._

 

When they got to Maki’s room - and _wow_ it was decorated, it was as edgy and red as she expected, but it actually had posters of _bands._ Granted those bands more bordered on the lines of MCR and Three Day’s Grace, but the point stood. She tried to ignore a gun mantle she had on above her bed - Maki opened a window, the same one that she had shot zombies from, and surveyed the area for a few moments.

 

Zombies were _surrounding_ the house, dozens upon dozens at the very least, and she could see zombies approaching along the horizon too. Dammit. It was her shouting, then Maki shooting and-

 

 _it was both of their faults, really._ The thought made her a little more calm, but she could feel the dampening of her hairline as it shifted and lowered from the sheer amount of sweat she was excreting. Hell, even _Kotoko_ was doing better than her - though that might be more her tendency to brush off horrible situations with a simple smile more than anything else.

 

“... what do we do?” asked Kaito. “There’s gotta be some way out.” After he said that, he proceeded to bounce his eyes along the walls and floors, as though searching for a secret tunnel that would bring them out of their inevitable demise, no matter how doomed their destiny and their future and absolutely everything else looked.

 

She wouldn’t panic.

 

She would stay calm.

 

“... hey, Maki?” she pointed at a grenade - who even _knows_ why she had a _grenade_ , what did her parents even do? - in the girl’s left side backpack pocket, the metal top poking out and ready to be pulled at a moment’s notice. “Throw that as far as you can. It should ward a lot of them off at least for a little bit.”

 

Surprisingly enough, Maki _complied._ She took the grenade out of her pocket with a sharp nod, stuck the top in her mouth, and yanked the rest of the grenade out with it so suddenly that Kaede immediately grabbed Kotoko and tossed herself to the floor with her.

 

As she squeezed Kotoko’s hair and pulled the girl closer to her chest despite her avid protests, she steadily released her grip when she realized that they had _not_ blown up - she acted too fast.

 

Instead, to her utter delight and utter horror, an entire horde of zombies blew up.

 

Maki had managed to toss the grenade straight into the center of the approaching horde like she had already done it before and had experience. Zombie limbs and heads and carcasses and organs and _oh lord so much blood_ flew in every which way while Maki merely watched, the image of complete and utter calmness that Kaede _almost_ felt terrified of her.

 

_Almost._

 

Who was she kidding, she was _scared shitless._ Who the hell blows up one-hundred zombies without batting an eye?

 

A real asset in the apocalypse, that’s who, but in any other situation Kaede would already be turning on her heel and running the other direction.

 

_Don’t let personal feelings get in the way._

 

The zombies closer to Maki’s house turned their heads at the sound of the explosion, their groans and moans audible to them even from a story above. For a moment, none of them moved. Then the next moment, like they were the synchronized swim team representative of New York City in the global finals, the rest of the horde began heading towards the sound, a few here and there lagging behind but following along all the same.

 

Mission success.

 

“Zombies react on sound…” began Kaede, speaking mostly to herself, but her comrades turned to her all the same, hanging onto her every word as she thought their current predicament through and weighed the options in her head. On one hand, they were screwed if they made even a _touch_ too much noise in their escape, she doubted the grenade trick would work twice if Maki didn’t have as good a vantage point. On the other hand, they were still screwed if they took even a second too long to escape the city. Reacting purely on stealth might take too long. “Um… do any of you all know how to parkour?”

 

* * *

 

It had been a joke more than anything. She knew that parkouring _was_ an option, she just wasn’t under the impression that it had been a _valid_ one. The buildings of the city did have a tendency to be closer together than most, but still not close enough where they could actually _jump rooftop to rooftop._

 

So when she found herself blazing across the rooftops, paneling shifting under her foot as Maki took the lead with Kaito close behind, she knew that any moment they could die, that someone could trip over their own leg and fall directly off a rooftop, that they could straight up fail at a jump. Kotoko held tightly onto her hand as they ran as fast as they possibly could in a desperate attempt to catch up to the two leading men, as they soared through the air with their legs spread wide open like a fucking ballerina, as zombies gawked at them from below like they could actually see them - though really that might've been her own imagination praising her more than anything. She could dream. 

 

A few times they really almost did die. Kaede herself lost her footing on more than one occasion and was only saved by Kotoko's quick reaction time or Kaito's catch. Kaito nearly toppled off a rooftop once when he tripped over his own ankle, only to be saved by Maki's steely grip and her inhuman strength. Maki hadn't bit the dust quite yet, but even Kaede could see a very clear line of sweat trailing from her head to her neck. They were exhausted, hot, and downright  _done._

 

Really, she hadn't expected to survive.

 

Yet as Kaede caught Kotoko one last time, they had actually done it.

 

They had fucking _parkoured out of their hometown._

 

_How the hell._

 

She silently thanked her music for her badassery, because there was no possible way that she had parkoured solely on her own. That just didn’t happen.

 

As Kaede lifted up Kotoko, grasping onto her waist as the dawn of a new day started and the end of a night filled with hell reached them, they stared out at the rising sun, at the light that spread upon the horizon as though the horrors of the past three days had been inconsequential, meaningless, like nothing really mattered to begin with and it reminded her painfully of just how _small_ they really were compared to that big, blazing sun.

 

It also reminded her of one important tidbit that she _really_ should’ve thought about.

 

_Where the hell do they go now?_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... what'd you guys think? Please give me a comment telling me your thoughts about this chapter, theories, opinions on everyone, etc. etc. I never actually played Ultra Despair Girls either so tell me if my Kotoko is a bit off please. Tbh I'm not too pleased with this chapter but that might be my own psyche, but hey, I'll see whether you guys are! 
> 
> TWITTER:  
> @M_BTree  
> @DillasWrites

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you all enjoyed it, please leave me a comment telling me your thoughts, theories, whateves! 
> 
> Follow us on twitter:  
> @M_BTree  
> @DillasWrites


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